Moebius - The Long Tomorrow

The Long Tomorrow is a story about a noir detective in a dystopian city where androids are nothing new. Sounds familiar. But it was originally published in 1976 in Metal Hurlant magazine!

That's right, meat puppet. William Gibson's inspiration for Neuromancer. Ridley Scott's visual starting point for Bladerunner. Moebius and Dan O'Bannon's The Long Tomorrow is THE original cyberpunk comic.

At least, that's the inference from a pointed comment William Gibson made about the comic magazine Metal Hurlant in the introduction for the Neuromancer graphic novel.

"...so it's entirely fair to say, and I've said it before, that the way Neuromancer-the-novel "looks" was influenced in large part by some of the artwork I saw in 'Heavy Metal'. I assume that this must also be true of John Carpenter's 'Escape from New York', Ridley Scott's 'Blade Runner'", and all other artefacts of the style sometimes dubbed 'cyberpunk'. Those French guys, they got their end in early."

Those french guys certainly did get in there early. To clinch it, another Gibson interview from Details Magazine (Oct.1992) mentioned Metal Hurlant, Ridley Scott and Moebius when Gibson talked about Bladerunner:

"...Years later, I was having lunch with Ridley, and when the conversation turned to inspiration, we were both very clear about our debt to the Metal Hurlant [the original Heavy Metal magazine] school of the '70s--Moebius and the others..."

Thanks to Bronze Age of Blogs for this fascinating little comic, linked below for your ocular pleasure.

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